I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

About That New Camera

I generally do not like new things. There are a lot of
reasons for this, of course. Part of it is that I tend to operate on
“autopilot” a lot. I put my toothbrush in the same place, I put the hamper in
the same place, I keep the leftovers I take for lunch in the same place in the
refrigerator. This isn’t out of some OCD desire, but rather sheer convenience.
When I can predict where things are, I can move faster, spend time thinking
about and doing other things, and generally save time. I use my feet to pick up my dirty clothes
while I brush my teeth, for instance, and know exactly the arc and angle I need
to toss them for them to land in the hamper. When my toothbrush isn’t where
it’s supposed to be, or the hamper was moved, it screws me up.

Yet it’s more than that. Setting things up and getting
yourself familiar with a new system takes time. I have a wife, two kids, a
full-time job, and gobs of chores I need to do around my house; if I have to
give something up, it ends up being my leisure time; I hate that. I loathe new
computers for the work it takes to set them up and customize them. I hate new
phones because you have to port over your contacts, and the auto-transfer is
never 100%.

And, perhaps worst of all, I generally rebel against
progress for progress’s sake. I don’t believe new is better, and in fact often
times it’s worse; there’s a reason humanity has done things the same way for
thousands of years, and “new” tends to be the result of arrogant thinking (“But
we’re better than we were!” No, we’re
not.). Invariably, “new” gets pushed a side for traditional again.

And, perhaps most importantly, the first version of software
is always riddled with bugs. The first wave of colonists anywhere always gets
slaughtered, and the first group of revolutionaries always becomes martyrs.
Being first is typically only a good idea in market trading, and even then it’s
dicey.

So, with that background, let me say that the new camera is actually
a little better than the old one.

I grant you, from what I hear, there were huge problems with
the new camera, and most folks didn’t feel there was any need for the old
camera to change. I was one of them, and I still am. While it’s possible the
new carrier fighter squadrons will require it, as of now, the old camera worked
perfectly well.

Folks complained about it being impossible to do a 5° dscan
with it. They complained about the way it moved when you were orbiting or
traveling. Those are all legitimate concerns, and they made me turn the new
camera off after only one try. If it’s
not functional, it’s not useful.

The March patch included a host of adjustments to the new
camera. Courteously, one of those
adjustments was the automatic turning back on of the new camera on all clients.
CCP had been talking about eliminating the old camera entirely within a month
or so, and I believed this was that day.

My verdict? The new camera can be made to work exactly like
the old camera, but with the added benefit of a much faster snap-to when you
select a new item. Previously, when I would click on a gate and do a 5° dscan,
I’d have to wait a few seconds while the camera rolled around gradually; that’s
gone, and my camera now points in the right direction almost instantly. That’s
a huge benefit to PvP hunters.

For those of you who are, like me, less adventurous and want
to make the camera work like the old one. First, hit escape and go to the “Display
& Graphics” tab, then deselect everything under “Camera Settings”. Uncheck it all.

But you still have one more thing to do. Go into your shortcuts. By default, your “Toggle
Tracking” shortcut has been changed to “Navigation / Tracking Camera: Toggle point
camera to selected item”. This is incorrect; to allow you to set up
auto-tracking when you click on an item in the overview, you want to clear that
shortcut and instead map it to “Combat / Toggle Auto Tracking”. This will give
you the same functionality as before, where you can focus the camera on
whatever you select.

And when you do that, the camera is more responsive, yet
functions the same way as before.

User Interface (UI) changes can be tricky; one wrong move,
and players can be turned off to a game completely. I know that if the new
camera stayed in its buggy state, I’d have quite possibly left – I want to
struggle with other players, not with the client itself. Great respect to CCP
for listening to the players’ complaints and accommodating them in a way that
still allows them to do whatever they claim can only be done with the new
camera.

7 comments:

I turned it off after 5 seconds as I couldn't use d-scan and made me dizzy. I actually did not even think of trying to learn it, but rather just turned it off like the nuisance. It was my first instinct. EVE is not a game where you can just enjoy surroundings and relax (not in most cases anyway). It's excel type of game where it's ugly, but functional. Quickly selecting between multiple accounts and have camera spin around every time I select stuff, no thanks.

I have sickness motion i already turn off the camera shake option , but the new camera gave me sickness moti9n because the fov , i beleave eve not take in consideration the 25% of the people than have this sickness a big fail

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